Paint Schoodic

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Thursday, March 26, 2015

Selling: The Venues (Part 2 of 3)

While I don't generally sell on-line, sometimes someone sees a painting and wants it. This was painted in Castine in 2014 and bought by a collector in New York City.

Yesterday I wrote about N., who
is a retiree now painting full time. She wants to sell paintings but doesn’t
want to be a full-time businessperson. “Would a blog and Pinterest be a way?”
she asked. “I have enough work that I could probably post one painting a day.”

Marilyn Fairman, Brad Marshall and me painting on the shore of Long Island Sound at Rye's Painters on Location in 2013.

Although I get hundreds of
repins from Pinterest I have never sold anything there. I don’t attempt to sell
via my blog, but Jamie Williams Grossman can and does with her Hudson Valley Painter. It’s a
model of neat, efficient marketing.

Showing work in person raises
the ante, because there are high costs to framing and mounting a show. Still, I
prefer physical selling to internet marketing.

The auction at Rye's Painters on Location, 2013.

While art festivals can net
good sales, I avoid them as a solo businesswoman; it’s a lot of work to schlep,
mount and tear down a show of framed paintings.

Instead, N. might consider
entering some plein air events near
her home. Restrain your work to common board sizes, and you have a great
opportunity to sell without a high entry cost. If the work doesn’t sell you
can reuse the frame. The real fun is in hanging out with like-minded painters
for a day or two.

Many buyers want a sense that
the work they’re buying has been judged in the marketplace and found worthy.
There is no short-cut to this point, but entering juried shows and being shown
in galleries are the two time-honored ways of building a resume.

Sometimes people complain that
galleries take “too much” for commissions, but that is money well spent. Even
if they only sell a few pieces of your work a year, their bricks-and-mortar
stores assure buyers of your professionalism, and the sales process is painless.

Let me know if
you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful
Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.